British-Saudi Bank Cartel Alleged To Finance Terrorism

By: Richard Freeman and Jeffrey Steinberg

May 17—Seymour Hersh’s recent expose showing that Osama Bin Laden had been under house arrest in Pakistan since 2006, and was being financed heavily in this situation by the Saudis, once again highlights Saudi sponsorship of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Since September 11, 2001 various parts of the U.S. government, including individuals in the executive branch and intelligence agencies, and members of Congress, together

With the 9/11 victims’ families, have repeatedly sought to expose the Saudi role in terrorism. Their efforts have been turned back by both the Bush and Obama Administrations, based on the claim that an alliance with Wahhabi religious zealots, with views which never escaped the Seventh Century B.C., is so important to U.S. national security interests, that it must be protected at all costs. In the Bush case, there is a direct and longstanding Bush family business and political alliance with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and their British controllers. The Bushes also share, with the House of Windsor, a geopolitical strategy which preserves the hegemony of the Anglo-American monetarists, while reducing the world’s population by any means necessary, including wars and famines. The Saudis played a major role in the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan, in the wars against Russian interests in the Balkans and Bosnia, and play a significant role in continuing terrorism against Russia and China, and the genocidal population wars which have engulfed the entire Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.Obama, never anything more than a Wall Street, City of London pawn, has continued Bush’s policies. This is the third in the EIR series exposing Saudi Arabia’s role in terrorism and its financing. Here we will outline some of the accusations which have been made, repeatedly, against related Saudi-controlled banking institutions, by members of the U.S. government, other governments, and independent researchers. Most critically, we will also show that the individuals involved in these related institutions have longstanding and deep relationships to the House of Windsor, specifically through Prince Charles. Prince Philip, Charles’s father, is, like Charles, a fanatical Malthusian, once stating that he would like to be reincarnated as a deadly virus in order to achieve radical population reduction.

Saudi Arabia and the House of Windsor

Queen Elizabeth sent Prince Charles on his first official state visit to Saudi Arabia in 1986, at the age of 38; he made his eleventh state visit in February 10-11, 2015. During that last visit, Charles had a private meeting with King Salman that covered wide-ranging strategic affairs; after that tete-a-tete, King Salman threw a lavish luncheon in Charles’s honor, attended by over 50 Saudi royals, featuring most prominently the powerful Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud, the King’s son, who is Defense Minister and was recently named Deputy Crown Prince, the number-two heir to the Saudi throne. Charles also met with former Crown Prince Muqrin, and his old friend Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who for a quarter of a century was head of Saudi Intelligence. Charles was given access and a reception greater than that accorded to any head of state.

Charles has been accused of being a road-block to investigations into the financing and control of international terrorism pursued by the families of the victims of the 9/11 attack. Authors Mark Hollingsworth and Sandy Mitchell documented and wrote in the book, Saudi Babylon: Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up inside the House of Saud, that, “Prince Charles’ relationships with prominent members of the House of

Abdullah Omar Naseef. Naseef has been chair-Saud have created serious problems and obstacles to UK agencies investigating claims of Saudi financing of international terrorism, according to Special Branch sources.”

Charles has also been at the center of securing major British deals to supply sophisticated weapons to the Saudis, including the al-Yamamah II deal of the late 1980s and 1990s, and the al-Salam deal, under which the Saudis purchased 72 Typhoon Eurofighter aircraft. He clinched it during his Feb. 17-19, 2014 state visit to Saudi Arabia, after British Prime Minister David Cameron had utterly failed to conclude such a deal.

The Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies

Examine just four of the Centre’s leaders and funders:

Abdullah Omar Naseef. Naseef has been chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Oxford Centre for a decade, and perhaps much longer (annual reports of the Centre are hard to obtain). Born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1939, Naseef apparently helped set up and preside over terrorist networks at a much higher level than Osama bin Laden.In 1962, according to his curriculum vitae, Naseef helped create the terrorist-sponsoring, Riyadh-based Wahhabite Muslim World League (MWL); in 1983, he became its chairman, a post he would hold until 1993.In 1983-84, Naseef appointed Abdullah Azzam as the MWL’s Education Department head, and, through Azzam, helped to create the organization called the Khidamat al-Maktab, the chief support organization of the Mujahiddin. In 1989, keeping every one of its core functions, the Khidamat changed its name to al-Qaeda.

That is, Naseef helped found the organization that today is al-Qaeda. Respected author Ahmed Rashid, in his book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, reported,The centre for the Arab-Afghans [the Afghansi mujahideen who were born outside Afghanistan, but fought Russian troops in Afghanistan—ed.] was the offices of the World Muslim League and the Muslim Brotherhood in Peshawar [Pakistan], which was run by Abdullah Azzam,” who worked for, and was directed by, Abdullah Naseef.

Rasheed explained that that money flowed into Naseef’s Khidamat/al-Qaeda organization, from ”Saudi Intelligence, the Saudi Red Crescent, the Muslim World League and Saudi princes and mosques.

In 1988, Naseef founded and chaired the MWL spin-off, the Rabita Trust, which he chaired through 2001. It was a central charity in Pakistan (Saudi Arabia’s most important ally other than Great Britain) and had a key role in the logistics for al-Qaeda and the Taliban. On October 12, 2001, the United States designated the Rabita Trust as a “Global Terrorist Entity” and froze its assets. On April 16, 2013, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the suit brought by the families of the victims of 9/11 could proceed with discovery against Naseef, who the lawsuit states “knowingly provided financial support to al-Qaeda, through the MWL, Rabita …” and other organizations.

Naseef is chairman of Prince Charles’s Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and his close confidant.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi served as a Trustee of the OCIS, at least through 2006.

A follower of the Muslim Brotherhood extremist Hasan al Banna, and a leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaradawi was expelled from Egypt by its President Gamal Abdel Nasser. He settled in Qatar. He rose to become spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide, and according to his own account, Kremlin Presidential Press and Information office was twice offered the post of official head of the Egyptian Brotherhood, but declined so as not to limit the scope of operations he could undertake. On Feb. 21, 2011, al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa against Libyan leader

Muammar Qaddafi, who was later murdered. In 2011, al-Qaradawi entered Egypt to help direct the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood’s pro-terrorist Mohammed Morsi.After Morsi was removed from power during 2013 by Egyptian General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, on July 22, 2013, al-Qaradawi appeared on the Qatari-controlled al-Jazeera news channel, to deliver a death threat, in particular against General el-Sisi, without mentioning his name, “if he, who has disobeyed the ruler [Morsi] does not repent, then he must be killed. There is a legitimate ruler [Morsi], and people must obey and listen to him.” On June 1, 2103, al-Qaradawi called on radicalized Sunnis to flock to Syria to overthrow Basharal-Assad

Prince Turki bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud.

Prince Turki is a Trustee of the Oxford Centre, and chairs its Strategy Advisory Committee, which develops the Centre’s long-term strategy. From 1977 until September 2001, Prince Turki was the director of the feared al-Mukhabarat al-A’Amah, Saudi Arabia’s Intelligence Service. Books and reports have linked Turki as a recruiter and confidant of Osama bin Laden, and a significant force in 9/11. Prince Turki is a long-time close friend and collaborator of Prince Charles. (Turki was one of the few foreign royals invited to Charles’s 2005 wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles).

Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud. Prince Bandar was the architect of the al-Yamamah British weapons for Saudi-oil deal, and while Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., was so close to the Bush family that he was known as Bandar made at a private dinner held by Prince Charles in England. Kremlin Presidential Press and Information office Bush. He also considers Prince Charles one of his closest friends in the world. In 1990, Prince Bandar contributed funds to the Centre. In 1997, Bandar organized Saudi King Fahd to make an astounding £20 million contribution—approximately $32.4 million—to the Centre. The May 30, 1997 the Financial Times reported that the contribution was made at a private dinner held by Prince Charles in Eng land, with Bandar selected as the person to announce the gift.

Prince Charles and Prince Mohammed alFaisal: Partnership in DestabilizationPrince Charles’s friendship and working relationship with Prince Mohammed al-Faisal, dates back at least 15 years, and may date earlier to the late 1980s. Mohammed is the senior member of the al-Faisal family clan, one of the most evil and powerful of the inner clique of Saudi royal families that run the House of Saud dictatorship. They are all children of former Saudi King Faisal al-Saud (reigned 1964-75).

Around 1999 or 2000, Prince Charles and Prince Mohammed agreed to be the joint heads of the committee that raised the money to construct the London Muslim Centre, which was a physical addition of the East London Mosque, which allowed the mosque to hold an additional 15,000 worshippers. The East London Mosque, London’s oldest, features a Muslim Brotherhood network. These two princes’ working relationship dates from this period, although it may go back more than a decade earlier.

The East London Mosque’s trust, in a history of itself, wrote “On the 23rd of November 2001, His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales and His Royal Highness Prince Mohamed al-Faisal laid the foundation-stone of the London Muslim Centre as part of a ceremony to launch the construction project” Later, the East London Mosque boasted that “the presence of these two high profile figures, at the launch of the London Muslim Centre, shows the high regard [for it] by royalty,” i.e., the Houses of Windsor and Saud.

The East London Mosque is more than just a place of worship: The United Kingdom Department of Communities and Local Government, an official agency of the government, reported that “the East London Mosque [is] the key institution for the Bangladeshi wing of JI [Jamaat-e-Islami] in the UK.” The Jamaat-eIslami is the institution for murderous terrorism on the Indian sub-continent, ravaging principally India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The Mosque has also been, at times, a breeding ground for Wahhabism.The Financial Angels of Jihad?

At a January 8, 2015 Capitol Hill press conference, on the subject of the declassification of the 28 pages, former Senator Bob Graham, the co-chairman of the original 9/11 Congressional Inquiry Committee, who helped draft its report, laid particular importance on unearthing “the financial and other forms of support, of the institutions which were going to carry out those extreme forms of Islam” that culminated in 9/11. Senator Graham emphasized that those networks exist today.

Below we profile some Saudi-linked institutions whose affiliations have led to allegations of ties to terrorism, including, in numerous cases, by various government. Prince Mohammed al-Faisal’s Banking EmpirePrince Mohammed al-Faisal, one of the many sons of Saudi King Faisal (reigned 1964-75), is considered to be Saudi Arabia’s most significant banker, with a financial empire which extends across the world. His banking empire, however, has some very strange characteristics, as the following profiles show. Prince Mohammed al-Faisal has established three major banking hubs: the Faisal Islamic Bank network, the Dar al-Maal al-Islami Trust (aka The DMI Trust), and the Faisal Private Bank. His flagship institutionthe DMI, is a financial conglomerate, with approximately 20 offices around the world, including in offshore centers such as the Bahamas, and Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Switzerland (where it was founded in 1981), Qatar, the U.A.E. and Pakistan. By 2012, DMI’s assets under management reached the level of $6.5 billion.The DMI Trust: DMI’s initial directors and officers were extremely controversial individuals. Ibrahim Mustafa Kamel. Ibrahim Kamel served as DMI’s first chairman (he has no known connection to Saleh Abdullah Kamel, the current chairman and founder of the Dallah al-Baraka Group).

On April 24, 2002, the United Nations placed Ibrahim Mustafa Kamel on its Security Council’s Sanctions Committee listing pursuant to paragraphs 1 and 2 of resolution1290 as being associated with al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden. The UN Security Council Committee then stated about Ibrahim Mustafa Kamel, that he “has provided material support in the form of manpower and other resources to enable the Islamic Army of Aden to pursue a terrorist agenda in Yemen. … The Islamic Army of Aden has also claimed involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole [which killed 17 American sailors] in Aden, Yemen, in October 2000.”Khalid bin Mahfouz served as member of DMI’s board of directors. Mahfouz was a scion of the notorious Mahfouz dirty money banking family. Khalid bin Mahfouz acquired a 20% stake in and became a director of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). BCCI was eventually forced to liquidate, in the face of multiple investigations, in 1991. Authors Jonathan Beatey and S.C. Gwynne, in their book, The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of BCCI, wrote that BCCI’s “black network” totaled between 1,000 and 1,500 people, and reportedly was used in terrorist ventures in countries around the world, including, according to the authors, the movement of narcotics to finance the Afghan mujahideen ‘resistance.’

Authors Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin stated in a September 2004 Washington Monthly article, that “law enforcement officials today acknowledge [that BCCI] would become a model for international terrorist financing.”in the early 1990s, when prosecutors from different countries forced the collapse of the BCCI bank, a large part of BCCI’s “unrecorded deposits” were from Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt, a sister bank of DMI as part of Prince Mohammed al-Faisal’s banking empire.

Haydar Mohamed bin Laden, half-brother of Osama bin Laden, also served on DMI’s board of directors. Haydar Mohamed bin Laden had set up a half-million dollar bank account in Geneva, Switzerland, payable to his brother Osama.

Hassan al-Turabi of Sudan served as a supervisory director of DMI Group from 1982 until 1992, according to an August 9, 2007 New York Times article.

While he was an official in the Sudanese government, al-Turabi in 1992 helped arrange for Osama bin Laden to move to and live in Sudan, and provided him protection, as bin Laden established jihadi terrorist-training camps in Sudan.Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whom we met above, served as DMI Trust’s “Sharia advisor.”

The Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt. The Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt in Cairo was established in the period 1977-79, as one of the first “Islamic” banks in the world. Not long thereafter, Mohammed al-Faisal set up its sister bank, the Faisal Islamic Bank of Sudan (the two of them together are here considered one bank).

Again, Prince Mohammed’s colleagues in this operations were controversial, to say the least.

Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman—the “blind Sheikh”—was a co-founder of the Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt. During the 1970s, Abdul-Rahman simultaneously led the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, known simply as the Islamic Group. Never a banker nor a businessman, Abdul-Rahman has one “profession”—terror. The Egyptian government charged Abdul-Rahman with issuing the fatwa that resulted in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. He was acquitted of that charge, expelled from Egypt, and then went to went to Afghanistan where he helped build the Maktab al-Khadamat, which would become al-Qaeda.

By 1990, the U.S. State Department had placed Abdul-Rahman on its terror-watch list, but he managed to enter the United States three times between 1990 and 1992. Abdul-Rahman helped orchestrate the Feb. 26, 1993 New York City World Trade Center bombing, which, although intended to collapse both towers, ended up killing six people, and injuring about 1000.

While not convicted of that bombing, Abdul-Rahman was arrested and convicted for a plot to blow up the United Nations, the Lincoln Tunnel, and the George Washington Bridge, and is currently serving a life sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina.

The Faisal Private Bank: Founded under the name Faisal Finance in 1982 in Geneva, Switzerland, the bank changed its name to Faisal Private Bank around 1990. Prince Mohammed’s DMI deployed a subsidiary—the Ithmaar Bank of Bahrein—which eventually acquired 100% of the stock of Faisal Private Bank of Switzerland.Mohammed Galeb Kalje Zouaydi, the accountant for Prince Mohammed al-Faisal’s sprawling banking empire, as well as for his brother Prince Turki, was arrested by Spanish authorities in 2002 and charged with being the principal funder of al-Qaeda activities in Europe. The May 6, 2002 Chicago Tribune reported that “The Spanish said the financier—Mohammed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi—had ties to the cell in Germany that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Zouaydi is believed to have funneled money to al-Qaeda operations around the world, and Spanish authorities detailed transfers to-taling $600,000.” The referenced German cell was sup-posed to be that of Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 hi-jackers.

Osama Bin Laden’s Bank

The Al-Shamal Islamic Bank, founded in Khartoum, Sudan in 1983, is often called “Osama bin Laden’s bank,” and with justification, as the U.S. State Department reported that Osama invested $50 million into the bank. It has been alleged that Bin Laden was one of its founders.

Terrorist Groups” that,“The al-Shamal bank does acknowledge that among its five ‘main founders’ and principal shareholders is another Khartoum bank, the Faisal Islamic Bank of Sudan.” This is the Faisal Islamic Bank founded and owned by Prince Mohammed bin Faisal (above).

Al-Shamal’s role in facilitating Bin Laden’s activities was elicited in testimony in a federal trial in the Southern District of New York in 2001, and included transfers to finance purchase of a plane, and payments to al-Qaeda operatives.

May 16—According to contacts of EIR in Sana’a,Yemen, the genocide against the population by Saudi Arabia’s war machine is horrific. Among the reports that are considered reliable is one from the U.S. based Freedom House that was provided by internal—not international observers—because international personnel are prevented from working inside the country due to continued Saudi bombardment.

Even more devastating is the fact that the almost total destruction of the transport, water, fuel, and power infrastructure can rapidly result in mass-killing of the population. Urgent humanitarian assistance is required both to address immediate human needs, and to repair the destroyed infrastructure.

According to the summary of the “6th Statistical Report from Freedom House, Yemen,” that covers up through May 12, the bombing has resulted in:

3,979 civilian casualties. 571 are children below 15 years of age, and 249 are women;

6,887 injured. Among them 1,106 children below 15 years of age, and about 775 women; inhabitants inside;

160,000-170,000 families emigrated from the targeted cities and villages;

54 hospitals and health institutions, 26 mosques, and 168 educational institutions have been targeted, including 3 schools that were destroyed when the students were inside.

Notes on the compiling of the report point out that the report is about civilian casualties and damage from Saudi-led airstrikes, and clashes between armed militants and Yemeni army and security forces. The armed militants mentioned in this report are: the alHouthi group (Ansar Allah); Saudi-backed ex-President Hadi’s armed groups; and al-Qaeda armed groups. Most of the deaths and casualties are caused by the Saudi air attacks.

In reality, there has been no Saudi ceasefire, despite the propaganda promises from Riyadh over the last week, and at Obama’s meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council at Camp David May 14, there was a total coverup of the genocide.

—Michele Steinberg

Al-Rajhi Bank and the Golden Chain

In July 2012, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 330-page report detailing the ties of the British bank HSBC (formerly the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) to international narcotics money laundering and terrorist financing. The report led to a Justice Department investigation, that ended with a deferred prosecution agreement and a record nearly $2 billion in fines.Nearly 50 pages of the Senate report were devoted to HSBC’s role in terrorist financing. The report used as an example its corresponding relations with Al-Rajhi Bank, the largest Saudi bank with $59 billion in assets, documenting what the reports authors said were systemic HSBC failures to acknowledge U.S. government and other reports of al-Rajhi’s links to Islamic extremists and terrorists.

The bank’s founder and largest shareholder, Sulaiman bin Abdul Aziz al-Rajhi (SAAR), was named in 2002 as a member of the Golden Chain, a network of 20 leading financiers of al-Qaeda. Individual members of al-Qaeda banked at Al-Rajhi Bank. In 2003, the CIA issued a classified report entitled, “Al Rajhi Bank: Conduit for Extremist Finance,” and, in the wake of 9/11, U.S. federal agents raided the Northern Virginia offices of the al Rajhi-linked SAAR Foundation, as part of Operation Green Quest, a law enforcement operation directed at alleged funders of jihadist terrorism.

While the bank and the al-Rajhi family have condemned terrorism and repeatedly denied any involvement in terrorist financing, the links between HSBC and al-Rajhi cited by the U.S. Senate investigators are a strong reminder of the British-Saudi ties which have been a recurring pattern in the probe of terrorist financing.

In a semi-official biography, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a central figure in the suppressed 28-page chapter from the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, boasted that it was the special ties between the British and Saudi monarchies that allowed for the creation of the al-Yamamah deal. It is just that deal which, EIR research has shown, created the offshore slush funds that have financed Anglo-Saudi covert operations since the mid-1980s, including the Afghan mujahideen, from which many of the future jihadist terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, and the more recent Islamic State (ISIS) sprang.